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pour out so much personal information since they still believe that social media is the place to
tell the world everything. This section will look at what users should be made aware of about
social media to make them more informed and thus more secure.
4.6.1
Limit personal information
Attackers, ranging from hackers to common burglars, will turn to one’s social media
account to see whether there is any information that might help them to stage an attack. A
burglar will look for a home address and posts about one having left for a vacation. A hacker
will look at other nitty-gritty details present on the account, such as one’s birthday, pet
names, spouses names, children’s names, posts about one’s bank, tax filing rants, and costly
insurance company complaints. From this list, it can be seen that the more one shares on
social media, the worse for them. A fake account masquerading as a friend or follower could
be owned by a hacker who will be busy collecting this information. Also, information, even if
thinly spread on different networks, can easily be pieced together by a determined hacker.
Sarah Palin, a US Vice Presidential candidate was hacked in 2008 after a hacker was able to
piece together answers to the security questions that she had set for her email. The
information was gathered from Google and Wikipedia. Today, it is very likely that the
answers to secret questions set by users on their email addresses can easily be found on their
Facebook accounts only.
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